Down verdant lanes--past thatched cottages, past a windmill, past
houses of more substantial mien, with a glimpse down a rolling green
valley----
"Hotel?" asked the ancient abruptly, from beneath his load.
"No, I want rooms in some cottage. Can you----"
"John Philip," said the ancient one didactically, and trudged on, and
finally dumped his share of the burden at the door of what looked like
a house but was a shop, in fact the shop.
He went inside and Graeme followed him. A genial-faced elderly man,
with gray hair and long gray beard and gray shirt-sleeves, leaned over
the counter, talking in an unknown tongue to a blue-guernseyed
fisherman, and a quiet-faced old lady in a black velvet hair-net stood
listening.
They all looked up and saluted the ancient one with ejaculations of
surprise in the unknown tongue, and Graeme stared hard at the
gray-bearded man, while they all discussed him to his face.
"Mr. De Carteret," said the ancient at last, with a jerk of the head
towards Gray-Beard. "He tell you where to find rooms."
"Thanks! Do you speak any English, Mr. De Carteret?"
The pleasant old face broke into a smile. "I am En-glish," he said,
with a quaint soft intonation, and as one who speaks a foreign tongue,
and beamed genially on his young compatriot.
"That's all right then. Do you know you're very like Count Tolstoi?"
"I haf been told so, but I do not know him. What is it you would like,
if you please to tell me?"
"I want a sitting-room and a bedroom for a month or so, perhaps
more,--not at an hotel. I want to be quiet and all to myself."
"Ah--you don' want an hotel. You want to be quiet," and he nodded
understandingly. "But the hotels is quiet joost now--"
"I'd sooner have rooms in a cottage if I can get them."
Count Tolstoi turned to the fisherman to whom he had been speaking,
and discussed the matter at length with him in the patois.
Then, to Graeme, "If you please to go with him. His wife has roomss to
let. You will be quite comfortable there."
Graeme thanked him, and as soon as he had settled satisfactorily with
his boatmen, his new keeper picked up both his bags, and led him along
a stony way past the post-office, to a creeper-covered cottage, which
turned a cold shoulder to the road and looked coyly into a little
courtyard paved with cobble-stones and secluded from the outer world
by a granite wall three feet high.
And as they went, the young man asked his silent guide somewhat
doubtfully, "And do you speak English?"
"Oh yes. We all speak English," he said, with a quiet smile, "except a
few of the older folks, maybe, and they mostly understand it though
they're slow to talk."
"And your name?"
"John Carré,"--which he pronounced Caury.
"Now that's very odd," laughed Graeme, and stood to enjoy it. "My name
is Corrie too, and John Corrie at that."
"So!" said the other quietly, with a glance from under his brows which
might mean surprise or only gentle doubt as to the stranger's
veracity. And, so odd was the coincidence, that the newcomer saw no
necessity to spoil it by telling him that his forebears had left him
also the family name of Graeme.
A large brown dog, smooth of hair and of a fine and thoughtful
countenance, got up from the doorstep and gave them courteous
greeting, and a small, white, rough-coated terrier hurried out of the
kitchen and twisted himself into kinks of delight at sound of their
voices. And that decided it before ever Graeme looked at the rooms.
For if there was one thing he liked when he wanted to be alone, it was
the friendly companionship of a couple of cheerful dogs.
And that is how he came,--without any special intent that way, but
through, as one might say, a purely accidental combination of
circumstances--to be living in that cottage in the Rue Lucas in the
little isle of Sark, and under a name that was indeed his own but not
the whole of his own. And herein the future was looking after itself
and preparing the way for that which was to be.